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Showing posts with the label Huffington Post

The libertine days are over: How the material world is reining in Internet companies

Early in the rollout of the Internet, leaders of the emerging online companies described it as an immaterial world of virtual objects and virtual activity that was not subject to the economics, financing, laws, or business arrangements of the material world. They portrayed it is as world without structure in which informality and collaboration among users would guide its operation. They described it as global phenomenon beyond the reach of governments. Many expressed highly utopian visions of the internet. Most embraced a highly libertarian philosophy; some an anarchistic one. These leaders primary interacted with each other and deluded themselves into believing what they were doing was unique, hallowed, and beyond worldly oversight. Internet service providers saw themselves as facilitators without responsibility for who used them or for what purposes. Companies such as Google, Yahoo, and Huffington Post created value extracting models in which they expropriated the work of others as p

Here’s why people won’t pay for news: No one does journalism anymore

I opened my Yahoo home page today and read the news headline “Outgunned Kurds Beg US for Weapons to Battle ISIS” and its lead paragraph.   “Interesting,” I thought, so I clicked on the item, expecting an expanded story from a news agency. What I got was the Huffington Post.     “OK, they are becoming a decent news source,” I reacted. So I began reading, only to realize they gave me two paragraphs before redirecting me to Newsmax for the entire story.    Newsmax is a news site established with the aid of politically conservative political figures and journalists. That doesn’t preclude them from reporting news accurately, but can influence their news choice, analysis and opinion. Nevertheless, I read the 14-paragraph story written by Drew MacKenzie. It was a sound story. However, it only paraphrased a story by Washington Post reporter Terrance McCoy, “The strongest military left in Iraq has not stopped the Islamic State.” So I decided to read the original Post story.   When I got there